A video from @aydeealdanass opens on a finger pointing at a small chrome ring beside a yellow steering wheel, while a voice explains that one of the unique interior features of this 1948 Tucker 48 is that you can shift the transmission without ever taking your hands off the wheel. The caption introduces the car as one with “a helicopter engine, three headlights, six exhaust tips, and six mufflers,” and says Chassis 1029 was Preston Tucker’s personal car.
The speaker, who says buying this car was a dream for him, gives the history in a few lines. In 1948, he says, Preston Tucker had a dream and a vision to build the world’s most advanced and safest car possible, and he built 51 of them. Number 1029 was Tucker’s personal car, and because it was his own, the speaker says it has unique features found only on this particular vehicle. Questions such as “Can you show some of the most unique features on this car?” and “What’s going on in here?” turn the clip into a guided walk around the car.
@aydeealdanass Meet the 1948 Tucker 48 with a helicopter engine, three headlights, six exhaust tips, and six mufflers. Chassis 1029 was Preston Tucker’s personal car and features a number of unique details that make this example especially unusual.
The Features He Points Out on the Car
Starting at the front, the speaker points to the three headlights. In 1948, he says, Tucker realized that a driver loses the light in a turn, so the center Cyclops headlight pivots with the steering wheel to light the way into the curve.
At the back, he says, the engine does not look like a normal one. He calls it a Franklin helicopter engine. His account of how it got there is that the Big Three in Detroit would not allow car engine makers to sell Tucker an engine, because those makers risked losing their deals with the Big Three, and that a meeting with Howard Hughes led to an introduction to Franklin, a company that made helicopter engines. That backstory is his telling in the video, and the museum pages below do not address it.
Then he turns to the exhaust. He says he has never seen so many tips on a car, and that every Tucker had six, but that this one is set apart by also having six mufflers, one per exhaust pipe. Asked what is going on inside the cabin, he describes the transmission: instead of shifting with a clutch and gas, you choose your gear in advance, let go, and at any point later engage the clutch and the gas.
He closes by calling the car highly personal to him. After eight years of restoration, he says, he and his team had a last minute opportunity to bring it to Pebble Beach 2026, and they won Best in Class.
What the Museums and the Tucker Club Record
The Henry Ford says in its collection page on Preston Tucker and the Tucker 48 that Tucker built 51 cars before a shortage of money and a surplus of bad publicity closed his company. The page says the prototype carried a 589 cubic inch six cylinder engine and that Tucker selected a 334 cubic inch six originally designed for helicopters for the production cars. It calls the center headlight the car’s defining feature and says that when the steering wheel was turned ten degrees in either direction, the light switched on and turned with it. It also notes that the taillights are visible from the side for safety.
The Smithsonian’s story of its own 1948 Tucker, number 1039, the 39th of 51 made, says that car still has the original Franklin modified helicopter engine, a rear mounted six cylinder rated at 166 horsepower. It lists the swiveling center headlight, a pop out windshield and a padded dashboard among the car’s advanced and safety features.
The Tucker Automobile Club of America, on its history page, lists the engine as a horizontally opposed six of 335 cubic inches and the transmission as a four speed manual with an electronic preselect, which matches the choose your gear in advance description in the video. The club says 51 were built, of which 47 survive.
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